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Portugal needs to improve digital skills, minister says

Portugal needs to have "more digital skills and reinforce the quality of these skills," the country's Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Manuel Heitor said on Wednesday in Coimbra.

The 60% to 90% of the Portuguese population that uses the Internet daily, doubling the number of small and medium-sized companies with digital skills specialists and increasing private spending on Research and Development (R&D) are some of the country's targets for 2030, said Heitor, adding that to achieve this required a "collective effort."

The minister was speaking at the closing session of the first Conference of the Permanent Forum on Digital Skills, promoted by the Government under the National Initiative on Digital Skills e.2030 (Portugal INCoDe.2030), which took place at the São Francisco Convent in Coimbra.

"There is a clear forward motion and now we need to continue," said Heitor, adding that the mission is to mobilise the whole country to pay "more attention to transforming Portugal into a European society, which is certainly a society with more digital skills." He added it was a complex, but worthwhile challenge.

Heitor also noted that "inclusion is as important as research," and it is necessary to bring digital skills into classrooms, job centres as well as "informal environments."

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